Absence makes the heart grow fonder. This line occurs in Thomas Haynes Bayly's song "Isle of Beauty." There is proverbial authority for this as well as for the contrary statement that absence kills love. But written literature is usually on Bayly's side. Charles Hopkins in his lines "To C. C." says,

Howel in his "Familiar Letters" (i. 1, No. 6) asserts, "Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it." Frederick W. Thomas, in a short poem, "Absence Conquers Love," boldly traverses the titular statement:

Desdemona, in Othello, i. 2, says, "I dote upon his very absence." Charles Lamb, in his "Dissertation on Roast Pig," punningly suggests a method by which the absent may keep their memory green: "Presents, I often say, endear absents." Bussy-Rabutin shows how both statements may be reconciled:

La Rochefoucauld says, "Friends agree best at a distance;" but this was a popular proverb before his day, and a similar moral is presented in the French adages, "To preserve friendship, a wall must be put between," and "A little absence does much good;" the German, "Love your neighbor, but do not pull down the hedge;" the Spansih, "Go to your brother's house, but not every day;" and the Scotch, "They are aye gude that are far awa." But proverbs would not be proverbs if they did not contradict one another. The last quoted is directly traversed by the French, "The absent are always in the wrong," and "Absent, none without fault; present, none without excuse." And every language furnishes examples to support this: e.g., the Greek, "Friends living far away are no friends;" the Latin, "He that is absent will not be the heir;" the Spanish, "Absence is love's foe: far from the eyes, far from the heart," and "The dead and the absent have no friends."